Research and Scholarship

Our faculty and steering committee are dedicated to both teaching and research. Find our faculty spotlight for this month below!

Heidi Rose, PhD, honored for her career as performer and performance studies scholar

Heidi M. Rose, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Communication in Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has received the 2018 Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance from the National Communication Association.

Given annually, the award honors individuals who have contributed an outstanding body of live performances. Dr. Rose has amassed many accomplishments in a 20-plus year career as a performance studies scholar, consistently crafting performances aimed at illuminating how power impacts bodies, cultures, families and theatre itself.

As both a professor and a solo performer, Dr. Rose studies performance from the interrelated perspectives of communication, culture and identity. She has performed her trilogy of solo one-acts, Words and Music: Mirror Image, Good Enough and Twin, as a guest artist at universities across the country, including Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, Arizona State University, Monmouth University and Emerson College.

In 2017 she received the Creative Expression Award from the NCA for the Study of Communication for her solo performance of Twin. In 2015 she was honored with the Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies.

“The recognition Dr. Rose continues to receive for her work is well-deserved and truly inspiring,” said Adele Lindenmeyr, PhD, Dean, Villanova University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “She is both an outstanding scholar and an acclaimed performance artist.”

In addition to her solo performances, Dr. Rose’s research on Deaf culture and the poetics of American Sign Language has been groundbreaking in its contribution both to knowledge of Deaf culture and ASL. Her studies of ASL literature have been published in Text and Performance Quarterly, Language in Society and The Journal of Applied Communication Research. Dr. Rose co-edited and contributed to the first-ever bilingual-bicultural book/DVD on ASL literary theory and criticism, Signing the Body Poetic: Essays in American Sign Language Literature, published by the University of California Press. Her study of Jamaican “Roots” theatre and its contribution to postcolonial Jamaican identity recently appeared in Theatre Annual.

The National Communication Association advances Communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific and aesthetic inquiry. NCA serves the scholars, teachers and practitioners who are its members by enabling and supporting their professional interests in research and teaching. Dr. Rose’s award will be presented on Nov. 10 at the NCA 104th Annual Convention in Salt Lake City.

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Villanova University was founded in 1842 by the Order of St. Augustine. To this day, Villanova’s Augustinian Catholic intellectual tradition is the cornerstone of an academic community in which students learn to think critically, act compassionately and succeed while serving others. There are more than 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and law students in the University’s six colleges.